I’ve been surrounded by retail my entire life. It runs through my family — from my grandfather to my father, both of whom built their careers in physical retail. You could say commerce is in my blood. But I grew up during the transition — the end of analog, the rise of digital. My curiosity for the online world started young. I remember selling used Nintendo games on eBay to fund new ones, long before I understood that was “e-commerce.” I’d photograph the cartridges, write a description, and wait for bids to come in while I downloaded songs from Napster. The internet was slow, the process clunky, but it was magic — the idea that you could trade with someone you’d never meet.
As I got older, that curiosity never left. I followed the evolution of marketplaces — Amazon, Shopify, Squarespace — fascinated by how anyone could now build something global from their laptop. Still, I didn’t take it seriously until the pandemic. In 2020, when everything shut down, Nicole’s physical gym closed overnight, and so did our family’s retail operations. We had a one-year-old daughter and no idea what came next. But we had a camera, an internet connection, and experience with fitness. Out of necessity, we launched NFit Online Studio, a digital version of Nicole’s gym. What started as a survival move became one of our core businesses. We learned, adapted, and realized that “digital” wasn’t the future — it was the present.
Around that same time, I was traveling often to China for work and noticed how integral tea was to daily life. Morning, afternoon, evening — people drank tea instead of sugary drinks, and obesity was almost nonexistent. That observation became the seed of NTea, our wellness tea brand. We started importing teas from Yunnan, developing blends, designing packaging, and selling online. It connected everything we valued — health, ritual, and commerce. Both NFit Online and NTea became proof that e-commerce can turn a passion into a living if you treat it like a craft and not a shortcut.
This series will dig deeper into that world — the tools, the platforms, and the mindset behind building online. From Shopify to Amazon, from product design to digital storytelling, I’ll share what we’ve learned running multiple online businesses. My goal is simple: to help more people see that e-commerce isn’t just about selling products — it’s about creating freedom, connecting ideas, and building something that lasts beyond the next algorithm change.